How to

sell your
products on
Amazon
The Beginner’s Guide

FAHIM NAIM

A high-impact guide written for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.

Contents

Chapter 1
Introduction to Selling on Amazon 1

Chapter 2
The Opportunity in Marketplaces 3

Chapter 3
What You Need to Sell on Amazon 8

Chapter 4
Competitor Analysis: How to Win the Buy Box 16

Chapter 5
Product Listing Optimization 21

Chapter 6
Promotion Strategies on Amazon 32

Chapter 7
Selling on Amazon Tips: What Not to Do, Pitfalls, and Myths 37

Chapter 8
Conclusion40

i
Chapter 1 Introduction to Selling on Amazon

1
Chapter 1

Introduction to
Selling on Amazon
Your online store is your home base, where you showcase your brand,
connect with your audience and ultimately sell your products. That said,
there are now many ways to reach and sell to existing and new audiences
with Shopify channels. In particular, Shopify’s new Amazon integration
offers you the opportunity to connect with potential customers searching
on its marketplace. With all of your products managed in Shopify, you
can create Amazon listings, link already existing Amazon listings, sync
inventory, and fulfill orders. For more details on setting up Shopify’s Amazon
channel, use this step-by-step guide and install the channel here.

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Chapter 1 Introduction to Selling on Amazon

Shopify’s integration with Amazon is exciting news for many brands, and
it’s okay to have questions: Why should I sell on Amazon? How do I manage
pricing between my Shopify store and Amazon? What does it take to grow
a business on Amazon, and for the long-term? What options and programs
are available on Amazon that I should utilize?

The goal of this guide is to tackle these questions and help you understand
how to create and grow a profitable and sustainable business on Amazon.
I’m a former Amazon Category Manager, and now run an ecommerce
consultancy that helps dozens of brands sell on Amazon.

I believe in growing your business for the long term, and not wasting time
on short-term hacks that can put your account at risk for getting suspended
or terminated. I certainly believe that things can be done quickly, since that
is especially required in ecommerce, while at the same time be on the right
side of the terms of service and guidelines set by Amazon. If this interests
you, keep on reading.

While it’s nearly impossible to create an all-encompassing guide to Amazon,

by the end of this guide you should have a better understanding of how to
optimize your time and what key things you have control of in order to build
a business on Amazon. This includes both strategic and executional guidance,
as I believe the ‘why’ is just as important as the ‘how’. So let’s get started!

2
 2
Chapter 2 The Opportunity in Marketplaces

Chapter 2

The Opportunity in
Marketplaces
Branded Store vs. Marketplace
Often times when I meet an entrepreneur or someone representing a large
brand, they tell me they “only sell on their own website” (often referred to as
‘direct to consumer’), or they “only sell on Amazon.”

When I follow up and ask why, they believe it’s best to only focus on
one channel. I typically hear responses like: “I want to own the entire

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Chapter 2 The Opportunity in Marketplaces

relationship with customers,” “Amazon seems like such a headache,” or “I

focus on Amazon because no one can find my website.”

While I’m not entirely ruling out this ‘all or nothing’ approach since it
work for some brands and sellers, I’m a big believe that most brands can
profitability grow their business if they do both: have their own branded
store and sell on marketplaces (i.e. Amazon).

A commissioned study by Forrester Consulting found that marketplaces

are likely to boost customer loyalty, increase average order values, and
build trust.

Several reasons are listed below, but in summary you can use both a branded
web store and marketplaces to complement each other. It reduces customer
dependency on a single sales channel, but also provides customers an option
for additional discoverability and buying features. Many customers are die-
hard Amazon customers (example: I buy everything from my toilet paper to
cereal on Amazon), so by exposing your products to these regular Amazon
users, there’s a higher likelihood, they’ll find you and purchase from you
through the channel they’re already comfortable with.

Those with less allegiance to Amazon may enjoy the experience of browsing
your website and engaging with your brand. Your email subscription offer,
remarketing ads and social media profiles make it easier to stay in touch
with these more brand-focused shoppers.

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Chapter 2 The Opportunity in Marketplaces

The point is that many successful brands use both their branded web store
and their presence on marketplaces to sustainably grow their business and
that’s why the Shopify-Amazon integration was created.

4 Key Reasons to Sell On Amazon

1. Shoppers Often Begin Their Search on Amazon

A recent study by BloomReach stated that shoppers are twice as likely to
start product research on Amazon than Google.

As this trend continues, it’s inevitable that customers will search for your
product on Amazon, whether you decide to sell on its marketplace or not.
Nearly 9 out of 10 customers check Amazon even if they find a product they
want directly on a retailer’s site.

I have seen dozens of instances where selling on Amazon led to growth on

branded sites. We’ve all been there: just before purchasing an item we pull
out our phones to check the reviews on Amazon.

2. Amazon is a Great Additional Sales Channel

While conventional wisdom is that you should focus solely on a “direct”
relationship with your customer, and mitigate reliance on retailers
generating most of your revenue, as discussed, Amazon is a great sales
channel to utilize in addition to your own Shopify site.

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Often the worry is that Amazon will cannibalize all of your sales but the
reality is that you can often maintain a healthy branded website in addition
to Amazon. If done correctly, Amazon can become a great complement to
your Shopify business very quickly.

3. Amazon Can Help Shoppers Discover Your Brand

Amazon can help build a sales funnel of potential customers that can
eventually shop on your branded site. Many successful brands have
launched on Amazon, and eventually get customers to purchase the same or
additional items on their own site.

For example, Casper Mattress has healthy reviews on Amazon, but has
almost 9x more reviews on their own site. The positive reviews on Amazon
give Casper strong credibility for those considering buying on Casper’s
site, and it also helps Amazon customers discover Casper’s recommended
products. Additionally, there are several value-added services offered on
Casper.com that can win over customers from purchasing on Amazon.

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4. Amazon is an Open Marketplace

If you don’t create a listing for your brand on Amazon, than be prepared that
a third-party seller can create it.

Should you trust an unknown party to manage the content, pricing, and
exchange with customers on behalf of your brand? I assume most of you are
shaking your head saying “no”, and with good reason. For example, below
are customer complaints about a Shark Tank product being sold by a third-
party seller with no affiliation to the brand, and with a list price nearly 3x the
price on the brand’s store.

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Chapter 3 What You Need to Sell on Amazons

3
Chapter 3

What You Need to

Sell on Amazon
There are several things to keep in mind before you start selling on
Amazon, and I will try to highlight several of those key areas below. For
one, keep in mind that not all categories are currently available for the
integration between Shopify and Amazon, so review your catalog to ensure
that you understand which product categories are currently eligible.

Secondly, you can get overwhelmed with all of the different terms, acronyms,
programs, and requirements to sell on Amazon. I recommend you start off
with a few products and test the waters before exporting all of your eligible
products to Amazon as there will naturally be a learning lesson along the

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way. Finally, it is worth understanding what available options are out there
for your products and which to pursue.

Making Your Way Around Amazon:

Account Types
While this guide is meant to summarize key strategies and initiatives you
can use to grow your business on Amazon, let’s go over a few of the basics,
starting with the difference between selling on Amazon (‘seller’, ‘3P’, or
‘marketplace seller’) and selling to Amazon (‘vendor’).

1. Amazon Seller Central with Fulfillment Options

When you’re a seller on Amazon’s marketplace, you own the inventory until
a customer receives it. You can opt in to have Amazon facilitate fulfillment
and customer service to customers or do it yourself (see below). In most
cases, being a third-party seller is the easiest and least expensive way to
start selling on Amazon. Sellers utilize the Seller Central portal, with some
different features available than the Vendor Portals.

As a seller, you have two different fulfillment options:

Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)

You send inventory to an Amazon Fulfillment Center (FC) and they manage
shipping and returns from customers. You can control how much inventory
to send to FCs as needed, and you pay storage fees for the product in
addition to a fulfillment fee for every unit sold to customers. Keep in mind
you, still own the inventory until a customer receives it.

Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM)

You fulfill directly to customers and manage shipping, returns and customer
service. This is a good option for made-to-order products or for products
that require a longer lead time for processing.

2. Amazon Vendor Express and Amazon Vendor Central

As an Amazon vendor, you sell direct wholesale to Amazon; they then own
the product once they receive it. The available options are Vendor Express,
which is open to anyone, or Vendor Central, an invite-only program.

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Benefits of being a vendor:

• Vine program

• Self-service promotions including Gold Box Deals

• Marketing placements on category pages, corporate emails, etc.

• Access to additional category initiatives such as Gift Guides, Holiday

Collections, etc.

• Access to programs such as Prime Now, Fresh and Pantry

• Lower chance of account being suspended for unknown reasons

Disadvantages of being a vendor:

• Less direct control over pricing

• Fulfillment is more complicated and offers less control

• Slower payment terms

• Typically is the more expensive model

• Increased reliance on Amazon Vendor Manager and Retail teams

While there is overlap between features available on the Seller vs. Vendor
Portals, we will primarily focus the remainder of this post on features available
on Seller Central since this is the focus of the Shopify-Amazon integration.

Account Suspensions & Listing Removals

While Amazon encourages sellers of all size to sell on the Amazon
marketplace, it is laser focused on the customer experience and thus has
the ability to warn, suspend, or block a seller account for poor performance
metrics or for behavior it deems outside of its Terms of Service (‘TOS’).

It is critical that you maintain healthy performance target rates (i.e. order
defect rate, late shipment rate, etc.) to prevent customers from having a
poor customer experience. Amazon will typically give you notifications and
warnings if you fall below those thresholds, and it may sometimes suspend
the offer of a specific listing while it asks you to remedy any current issues.
If the issues continue to exist, it can result in an overall account suspension,

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which then requires you to submit a Plan of Action (‘POA’) to plead why you
should have your selling privileges restored.

Another, and more common, reason for account suspensions is for engaging
in activities that Amazon states is a violation of their TOS. Examples include
incentivizing unauthorized reviewers with free products or money, selling
counterfeit items, rights owners notice complaints, soliciting only positive
feedback from reviewers, and more. Additionally, opening up a second
account without approval for multiple accounts could lead to a suspension.

In summary, once you launch your account it is your responsibility to ensure

your performance metrics are healthy and that you ‘play by the rules’ - even
if it seems like your competitors may not be (i.e. buying reviews from review
clubs, posting fake reviews on competitive products, etc). Your goal is to
have a healthy and active account not only for now but also for the future.

Making Your Way Around Amazon:

Additional Programs
There are no shortage of programs and opportunities for brands on Amazon.
While we won’t be able to review every potential opportunity in this guide,
we will summarize several of the key areas that you may be able to utilize to
grow your brand.

Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA)

FBA is a service provided by Amazon where you can leverage Amazon’s
fulfillment and customer service capabilities for your products. FBA allows
brands to send product to Amazon Fulfillment Centers to be stored and
fulfilled to customers.

Amazon also handles customer service and returns for FBA products,
and the products become Prime Eligible as a result of the FBA program
(this makes your products eligible for Free Two-Day shipping for Prime
customers or Free Standard Shipping for Non-Prime customers).

The reason this is so important is that Prime customers spend considerably

more than non-Prime customers, and many customers use the ‘Prime only’
filter when searching for products. A study from Piper Jaffray estimates
that nearly 1 of every 2 households in the US has a Prime Membership, and

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several estimates from other firms claim that Prime Members spend at least
2-3 times more than non-Prime members.

In summary. if you do not use FBA, then you are responsible for storage,
fulfillment, customer service, and returns for your product. Follow these
instructions to connect Shopify with Fulfillment by Amazon.

Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP)

Many brands are unaware of the SFP program and that they could
potentially qualify for making their products Prime Eligible through their
own direct fulfillment to customers. To qualify for SFP, you need to meet
a high performance bar and meet several metrics during a trial period
required to enroll in the program. For example, you must be able to ship
99% of orders the same day you receive them (if orders come in after 2PM
local time, orders can go out the next business day). Additionally, you can
make your products Prime Eligible in certain regions if it is too costly to
be Prime Nationwide. Keep in mind, if you’re in an eligible city, you can
use Shopify’s integration with Postmates and Uber to provide same-day
delivery to your local customers.

Amazon estimates that SFP listings that became Prime Eligible for the first
time saw an average sales lift of more than 50%. Also worth noting that there
is no additional cost to brands to enroll in SFP outside of the shipping cost.

Subscribe & Save

FBA Subscribe & Save allows customers to purchase eligible products
at a discount through a subscription program. There is a wider range
of categories that allow for Subscribe & Save, and it is a great option for
products that customers buy regularly. This allows brands to build greater
loyalty with customers, and reduces the chance that your customer will buy
a competitor’s brand. To enroll for eligible products, your FBA account must
be in good standing, have a feedback rating of 4.7 or above, and the account
has to be active for at least 3 months.

Brand Registry
The Brand Registry program has gone through several recent changes at
Amazon, providing private label sellers with registered trademarks access
to a variety of new tools. Namely, brand registry now requires a brand to
register their character/word trademarks with the USPTO (or relevant
government trademark office), and that the trademark must match the
brand name printed on products or packaging.

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This allows brands to utilize the brand registry tool to report and better
manage their registered copyright or trademark infringements. Additionally,
brand registry is now a requirement for several new tools that are opening
up to sellers, including EBC (see section below), Amazon Stores (a new
storefront for brands to showcase their brand and products, Headline Search
ads, and more.

Because of the recent requirement for all brands to have a registered

trademark in order to be eligible for Brand Registry, there is reportedly a
long wait time for the USPTO to provide you with your registration number
when you get approved, so if you are private label brand I highly encourage
you to look into this very soon.

Business Reports
Seller Central has a rich interactive dashboard that allows you to track
several key metrics including sales, traffic, and conversion rates (note traffic
and conversion rates are not available to Vendors currently). It gives you the
ability to look at this for several different time ranges and rollups, identify
sales trends and new opportunities, analyze refunds and negative feedback,
and much more. I highly recommend spending some time getting familiar
with the reporting options as you will inevitably uncover data that will
influence your approach to growing your products (i.e. products to increase
traffic via ads, items that have product issues or high returns and need to be
improved/discarded, etc.).

Category and Product Restrictions

Because of a variety of reasons including reducing counterfeits, as well as
increasing quality and safety, several categories require special approval
in order to sell those products. The categories list can be found on Seller
Central, and in order to gain approval you may have to be ‘ungated’ and
provide invoices from your supplier, government agency documents
(i.e. FDA), etc. In most of these cases you will need to register for the
Professional Selling Account option for Seller Central.

Additionally, Amazon restricts certain products and categories, so if you

believe that your product may fall in a ‘grey area’ it is best to research this
ahead of time on Seller Central.

North America Unified Account

Through this program, Professional Sellers have the ability to easily cross-
list their products on Amazon Canada and Amazon Mexico. In a matter of

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minutes, you can export your listings to the other country marketplaces,
adjust pricing rules, exclude products that you do not want to sell, and
much more.

It is recommended to verify each listing that you export to ensure everything

looks right, and that your pricing logic makes sense. There is much more
information available on Seller Central, but the good news is that this does
not require creating a brand new account in other countries (as is the case
with non-North American Amazon marketplaces).

Amazon EU / Global Selling

Amazon has a variety of programs to make it easier to sell to its
marketplaces across the world, particularly in Europe. A great opportunity
to start gaining exposure to the EU is through the Amazon European
Fulfillment Network (EFN). This gives you the ability to send inventory to
one FC in a local marketplace in Europe (most often the UK), and then via
the FBA program that FC will then fulfill to the customers of the other
four European Amazon Marketplaces, including returns, and show up as
Prime Eligible.

Thus, you can fulfill to customers of Amazon Germany, France, Spain, or

Italy through your Amazon UK inventory. This also simplifies the need for
only a single VAT for the ‘home’ country you select, until you pass a certain
sales threshold in which case you will need to collect tax and register for a
VAT in each corresponding country.

Amazon Exclusives
Exclusives is a pre-approved sellers-only program on Amazon that helps
showcase brands of exciting and innovative products that can only be
found on Amazon and that brand’s site or store. Brands that are approved
into the program gain access to several opportunities to drive traffic and
conversion to their Amazon pages, including incremental merchandising
and promotional opportunities, promotional tools, enhanced detail pages
including product videos, and a Brand Development team to assist with
managing your Brand on Amazon.

There are several qualifications needed to gain access to the program,

including an exclusivity clause where brands won’t sell wholesale during that
time period. The cost of the program is 5% over their category referral fee.

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Chapter 3 What You Need to Sell on Amazons

Multi Channel Fulfillment (MCF)

MCF is a growing program in which Amazon allows you to utilize your FBA
inventory to fulfill orders to other channels, including your own Shopify
store. The costs of the program have come down over time and this may be
a good opportunity for brand owners to fulfill orders from their Shopify site
or alternative marketplace via Amazon, even if only on occasion (such as
during holidays or spikes in demand).

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Chapter 4 Competitor Analysis: How to Win the Buy Box

4
Chapter 4

Competitor
Analysis: How to
Win the Buy Box
The first step in promoting your Amazon listing is to understand what
you’re up against. For most categories, you can learn a tremendous amount
about what customers want and don’t want based on competitor pages.
Additionally, reviewing complementary products regularly can alert you to
best practices and promotional opportunities. Analyze competition with the
following factors in mind.

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Chapter 4 Competitor Analysis: How to Win the Buy Box

Customer Reviews
Customers are very clear on what their preferences are, and often times
can lead you to future product enhancements or ideas. Are customers
complaining about packaging? How many customers mention price in
their reviews? What other products have they mentioned trying in the
same category?

Updating Frequency
How often are competitors updating product content, pictures, or other
content? Are they cycling through seasonal photos (i.e. Christmas or
Halloween themed?) Do they have clearer messaging of product benefits
and usage than you do? How often are they changing pricing and what effect
does that seem to have on their Best Seller Rank?

Complementary Products
For complementary categories (for example, memory cards and cameras),
what are those brands doing well in? Is there an opportunity to cross-
promote with them? Are there any insights on their customer reviews about
what lead them to that purchase and how that may affect how they search for
your product? Does it make sense to target those category keywords on your
Sponsored Product campaigns?

Make an Action Plan

Move quickly. If you see a competitor is out of stock, that may be a good
time for you to lower pricing and increase ads. If you see that competitor
reviews are increasing at a faster rate than you, try to figure out the cause.
Look for new and innovative ideas such as images or product content from
broader categories, and implement them before your competitors.

One additional area of competition to keep in mind is against yourself. I

have often heard fears from brands that they worry Amazon will undermine
their own brand and force them to play the low price game, in turn lowering
their prices elsewhere.

While every category can be different, for most categories you can create a
strong brand on Amazon without having to be the lowest cost player. If you

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are a premium brand, for example, you may not have to always compete with
other brands on price but perhaps by review quality, assortment, availability,
etc. In many categories you will notice that the Best Sellers aren’t necessarily
the lowest cost options. Solid State Drives, for example, are commodity
products that you would likely believe customers would always turn to
the cheapest product. As in this example below, Best Sellers that have built
enough reviews and customer trust are able to charge a premium versus
other competitors.

Buy Box
If you have been selling on Amazon or have started researching becoming
a seller, you have inevitably come across the term ‘buy box’. The concept is
simple, although the execution to manage it can be much more difficult.

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Nearly every detail page has the option for other qualified sellers to also list
their offer for that ASIN (Amazon’s sku identifier). So even if you are the
manufacturer of a product, another seller could potentially undercut your
price on the same item and be the default option on that detail page - or ‘win
the buy box’. The exception is for brands that have brand gating, which is
extremely difficult to get approved.

As you can see on the screenshot below, ‘DreamWater’ is winning the buy
box for this ASIN but there are several other sellers listing an offer on the
“Other Sellers on Amazon” section.

The algorithm for who wins the buy box is proprietary, but the main
components are price, prime eligibility, shipping cost, quantity, and seller
rating. As you can probably guess, price will have a major impact, but
being Prime Eligible and having a high seller rating can sometimes be the
difference between you winning or losing the buy box.

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Technically, each unique product should only have one ASIN (one UPC
to one ASIN), but sometimes you will see several different listings for
the same product, which is a confusing and frustrating experience for
customers. Amazon continues to crack down on duplicate listings and gives
Brand Registered sellers the ability to merge duplicate pages, so it’s best to
play by the rules and avoid looking for ways to create a separate page with
less competition.

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 5
Chapter 5 Product Listing Optimization

Chapter 5

Product Listing
Optimization
How Amazon SEO Works
Spend enough time searching for tips on how to optimize your Amazon
business and you are sure to come across dozens of SEO and keyword tools
out there. Some of them promise hacks that are guaranteed to get you to
a top ranking, others say they ‘trick’ the search algorithm to feature your
product first.

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Typically, I’m weary of black hat tricks and hacks that promise to outsmart
the system. While some of the tools come in handy in certain scenarios,
what I would recommend is to approach Amazon SEO from Amazon’s
viewpoint. More than 80% of customers never scroll to Page 2 of a search,
so how can you ensure that customers are happy and continue to purchase
on Amazon? By providing relevant products that have a high possibility of
converting into purchases.

A simpler interpretation: show customers products they want to buy. This

factors in what keywords customers are searching for, conversion rates,
related products, recent sales history, pricing, stock, and much more.

Thus, what keywords do you think customers are searching for when they
are discovering your product? Have you included those terms in your
keyword field when setting up your product (i.e. ‘backend’ keywords)? What
products typically show up for your desired search terms, and how are they
priced and how many reviews do they have relative to your product? How
can you increase sales velocity in a short amount of time (i.e. Promotion) so
that you move up the rankings?

Also, keep in mind that going out of stock is like slamming the brakes on
your momentum, especially if there aren’t any other resellers on your listing.
Being out of stock will hurt you with rankings and search relevancy during
that time period, and gives customers another reason to try a competitor’s
product. One tip: If you do run out of stock on your FBA inventory, create a
FBM offer to mitigate the potential lost traffic.

I have seen hundreds of examples of brands that showed up on the first page
of search or were even a Best Seller in their category, but after going out
of stock for a few days lost that positioning and it sometimes takes weeks
or months to regain that position. In those cases, a competitor’s listing
increases visibility and unless you have extremely strong brand recognition,
it is difficult to convince customers to switch back to your product after they
bought/used another product.

FBA storage fees in most cases are small enough that I would highly
recommend having a 2-3 month buffer of inventory available at all times (or
at least when possible).

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Get Your Pricing Right

Finding the right pricing for your products is tough enough as is, but
add Amazon’s complexities and an open marketplace for other sellers to
compete with you, and you have quite a handful. However, if you keep
some key considerations in mind, you can hopefully prevent other larger
issues from arising.

Pricing Parity
Your selling agreement with Amazon includes a pricing parity clause. Your
item price and total price can’t be lower at any other online sales channel
according to the ‘general pricing rule’. This includes your own Shopify site.
Avoid a potential account suspension for not following this mandate and
ensure that you price Amazon as low as your other channels.

Automate Pricing
Since Amazon is a marketplace, you may very well be competing against
other third parties to ‘win the buy box’. There are several repricing tools
available on the market, and Amazon recently released the ‘Automate
Pricing’ tool on Seller Central to help you automate pricing decisions. For
example, you can set a rule to beat the buy box by 2% until you reach a
certain floor.

Ensuring you are winning the buy box regularly, and being alerted when you
are losing the buy box, is essential to growing your Amazon business. Note
that pricing for Vendors has a different process from Marketplace Sellers.

Promotions are a great way to increase visibility and gain reviews. Lightning
Deals, price discounts, best deals, coupons, buy one get one offers, discount
codes etc., are all great opportunities to offer and highlight a temporary
discount to your product. This benefits you by not only allowing you to
sell more units in a short amount of time, but it also temporarily lifts your
baseline business post promotion (i.e. you move from #50 best seller to #10
when your promotion ends, likely increasing your run-rate temporarily at
your regular price).

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Another thing to keep in mind is that unlike in physical stores, having

a ‘high-low’ pricing model often does not work well in the long-run for
Amazon sellers. For example, at a big-box Retailer it is common to see the
price of a product at a high price, say $50 for the first three weeks every
month, and the price drops on promo to $25 the final week of the month.
While there are some inherent benefits for stores to do this, this would
probably hurt you on Amazon.

The reasons why this is not recommended, and instead a stronger everyday
price (‘EDLP’) is preferred, are simple. For one, this creates a huge range and
arbitrage opportunity for other sellers to buy your product when you are on
sale, and undercut your price to win the buy box when you are not on sale.

Additionally, many online shoppers are savvy and utilize pricing tools to
track pricing. If it is obvious that you lower the price dramatically once a
month, customers will simply wait until your price drops.

Finally, because the Best Seller Ranks and Search Algorithms are constantly
updating, you may drop in search results when you are not on sale, and
increase when you are back on sale. If this is the case, you are probably better
off limiting the high-low model and moving to a stronger everyday price so
that you can build momentum in your rankings over time and continue to
gain more reviews.

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Optimizing Your Product Listings Detail Pages

Ecommerce shoppers, particularly on Amazon, make a decision within just
seconds on whether they want to further engage with a detail page or go
back to search results. How do you pass this initial hurdle so that a customer
goes below the fold and seriously considers purchasing your product? Start
by making it simple for them.

Product Titles Matter

Does your title clearly describe to customers what the item is and if it is
compatible with their needs? Does it mention the brand name? Does it
clarify what the use case is or primary benefit? And most importantly,
does it do all of this concisely so it isn’t too long to skim? For example, a
succinct yet complete title such as below probably works better than simply
“Maximus Outdoor Light” or even than a 3-4 line long title that looks more
like spam than a product title.

It was commonly believed that adding as many keywords as possible into

a title would help with SEO, but if you look at most best sellers in popular
categories, their titles are usually no more than 10-20 words. This is likely
because customers have a hard time quickly scanning long titles, and they
may even get annoyed with titles that are displayed this way (not to mention
titles may get cut off while searching on mobile or on deals).

Bullet Points are your Elevator Pitch.

Make sure to hit all of the key areas that customers need answered before
they have to scroll below the fold on desktop or to additional sections on
mobile. Mention key facts like if there is a warranty or customer service
available to troubleshoot issues. Also avoid having bullet points that are
more than a few lines long since most customers are skimming this section.

Clear Product Image

Your main photo should clearly show what the product is before zooming
in. Additional photos should provide additional angles of the product, and if

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relevant lifestyle imagery. It is also probably worthwhile having one image of

the ‘back of the box’ showing ingredients and instructions. Also, ensure the
images are high quality so the customer is able to zoom in and out.

Concise Product Descriptions

Remember that customers are skimming so a 20-line long paragraph
probably won’t do the job. Use your brand voice here and reiterate key
selling points while mentioning any supporting facts that can help customers
understand why they need to buy now.

Variations
Variations allow you to easily display to customers the various size, color,
style, etc. options you have for your product. While each product will still
have it’s own unique ASIN and detail page, variations present customers
the ability to quickly switch between options of a product, and equally
important pool reviews amongst those ASINs. For example, if you are selling
an iPhone case in black, blue, and silver, a variation will allow customers
to easily hover over the various color combinations, and the reviews for all
of those options will be pooled together (i.e. the black gets 5 reviews, blue
gets 3 reviews, and silver gets 2 reviews, the review count displayed for all
options would be 10).

Here is an example of a detail page before and after it updated the key items
to maximize conversion.

Before updates:

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Chapter 5 Product Listing Optimization

After updates:

Enhanced Brand Content (EBC) - NEW

Now available for Brand Registered Sellers, EBC is a version of A+ content,
which allows you more room on the page to add visuals and text to increase
customer engagement and tell a better product and brand story. The
potential benefits are increased conversion, lower return rates, and increased
brand following. A+ content was originally only available to Vendors but the

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Chapter 5 Product Listing Optimization

recent roll-out to brand registered sellers is a huge opportunity for sellers to

better showcase their products on Amazon.

Here are some additional key items to keep in consideration when setting up
or updating detail pages:

Write for Humans, Not Search Algorithms

Don’t play the keyword stuffing game. Approach it from a customer’s
perspective on information they need to be convinced it’s worth the
purchase. Amazon has stated its mission is “to be Earth’s most customer-
centric company…” and that is a great way to approach incorporating
keywords into your page contents rather than gaming the system with
irrelevant keywords.

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Respond Regularly
Regularly check your pages for questions and new reviews. Many
customers spend more time reviewing customer questions and reviews
than a brand’s published content, so be sure to regularly check and respond
to these as necessary.

Encourage Getting Reviews

It’s no secret that reviews are extremely important. We have likely all bought
something on Amazon, and in many of those cases the decisions came
down to which product had the better reviews, even if it had a higher price.
Furthermore, as I mentioned at the beginning, reviews on Amazon will have
an impact on other channels, including your Shopify site, since customers
tend to do research on Amazon first.

On that note, Amazon recently made a change to its review policy. In

short, Amazon is banning reviews for discounted or incentivized products.
Previously, many brands would provide discounted or free products to
customers through a variety of channels including review sites in exchange
for a review. A recent study of over 7 million reviews showed that the
average rating for incentivized reviews were meaningfully higher than non-
incentivized reviews.

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Chapter 5 Product Listing Optimization

The good news is that the recent change makes things more of a level playing
field since brands were essentially penalized for not getting incentivized
reviews if their competitors were.

So, what can you do to get reviews? Start with email follow-ups.

Sellers are allowed to send follow up emails to customers related to a specific

order, and there are several automated services available that can help you
manage this process. The guidelines are here, but in summary you may not:

• send emails with marketing or promotional messages

• have links to other websites
• demand, ask for, or incentivize positive reviews

You can, however, send a few emails confirming you have received an order,
and also following up on an order requesting them to leave a review or
seller feedback.

There are tons of best practices out there, but I’d recommend sending no
more than 2-3 emails: one during the order confirmation or delivery phase,
and one a few weeks after the product was received. Avoid making your
emails feel too ‘spammy’ or aggressive, and give customers an outlet to share
negative feedback directly with you prior to writing a negative review.

Services such as Feedback Five or Feedback Genius can automate the

process and make your life a lot easier.

Another way to encourage reviews is through a product insert, following

the same guidelines as the follow-up email (i.e. not incentivizing reviews,
directing the customer off of Amazon, etc.). Bonus points if you have make
your insert fun and memorable so customers want to leave positive feedback.

Yet another way to get reviews is by asking previous customers (or ‘backers’
if you were crowdfunded) to leave you a review on Amazon. As long as you
are not incentivizing people to leave a review (i.e. “I’ll give you a $5 credit”
or “You’ll be entered into a sweepstakes”), this is a safe and legitimate way
to garner reviews. Customers don’t have to actually buy the product on
Amazon to leave a review (although those show as ‘verified purchases’), so a
customer who has purchased your product elsewhere such as your Shopify
store is eligible to leave a review for your product on Amazon as long as they
have an account.

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Chapter 5 Product Listing Optimization

Finally, Amazon does offer programs such as the Early Reviewer Program,
and there are rumors that it has just started to roll out the Vine Program to
select sellers, so both are potential opportunities to encourage reviews.

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 6
Chapter 6 Promotion Strategies on Amazon

Chapter 6

Promotion
Strategies on
Amazon
Run Sponsored Product Ads
Amazon has a robust ad platform that allows you to market your product to
customers on Amazon.

Amazon Sponsored Product Ads is a PPC (pay per click) model that allows
you to promote your products along search results. Placements on desktop

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Chapter 6 Promotion Strategies on Amazon

can be above, alongside, or below search results as well as on product

detail pages.

Placements on mobile appear below search results and on product

detail pages.

I could write an entire guide about Sponsored Ads but here are three
important steps to get up and running quickly:

Step 1: Start with automatic targeting. This allows Amazon to use its
powerful search algorithms to suggest an exhaustive list of potential

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Chapter 6 Promotion Strategies on Amazon

keywords for you. This requires you to pick a flat default bid across all
keywords, but the goal here is to get data on how various keywords perform.

Step 2: Once you have at least a few weeks worth of data (the longer the
better), start evaluating your automatic targeting campaign to determine
which keywords performed the best. You will want to transition those over
to a manual campaign, where you can now focus on only the most relevant
keywords that performed well for you. With a manual campaign, you have
the ability to adjust bids by keyword

Step 3: Continue to iterate your manual campaign for keywords and bids.
Data is your best friend, but if you feel strongly that you should include
additional keywords that haven’t yet performed well, test various bid
amounts. Different bid amounts can yield various placements and yield
varying results, so continue to test until you find something that works well.

There are several keyword and additional third party tools out there to help
build a relevant list of long-tail keywords, but again I believe starting with
above could get you relatively far without getting overwhelmed or requiring
to invest in incremental headcount to get your ads up and running. You can
certainly take these steps further to optimize your ads depending on your
resources, but if not this is a great way to get the process started quickly.

Note: Keep an eye out on the keywords that are working best, and be sure that your
detail pages are utilizing these words in some regard. For example, if ‘organic’ is a
keyword that is converting well, ensure that ‘organic’ is in your detail page title.

Additionally, during manual campaigns you have several phrase types to

choose from including ‘exact’,‘phrase match’, and ‘broad match’. The system
gives you a detailed explanation of each but there are a few things to keep in
mind. First, you don’t need to include common misspellings even for exact
match. Also, ‘exact’ is a good starting point to find words that work well and
that won’t eat up your budget, and you can eventually work your way up
through broad matches keeping in mind that these will spend your budget
much quicker.

NEW: Headline Search Ads released to Brand Registered owners.

Headline Search ads display on top of search results and are a great way
to increase visibility to your products while customers are searching or
browsing through results. I suggest utilizing keywords that work well in your

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Chapter 6 Promotion Strategies on Amazon

Sponsored Product campaigns as a starting point for Headline Search, and

iterate bids, copy, and keywords as you see fit.

Take Advantage of Promotions

Promotions including Lightning Deals are a great way to sell units at an
increased velocity, ultimately leading to more reviews. Lightning Deals
are flash sales that are featured on the Amazon Deal Page, one of the
most frequently visited pages on Amazon. Not only do they help increase
discoverability of your product, but they help you increase sales during the
limited time sale and even after the deal is completed. This is because you
often increase your rank and search relevancy due to the increased units sold
during that flash sale, and this carries over for a period of time once the deal
complete, sometimes for several weeks.

Lightning Deals for most sellers are invite-only in a sense since you can only
run them when they show up on your ‘see all recommendations’ section of
the screen on Seller Central, and there is often a nominal cost associated
with running this deal. For big events such as Prime Day and during the
Holidays, Lightning Deals can be very successful in selling hundreds to
sometimes thousands of units in a few hour period, and also helping new
customers discover your brand, even if they don’t buy it immediately.

The goal is not to always be on promotion or providing deep discounts, but

if you can sprinkle these in occasionally, including towards the beginning
of your product lifecycle on Amazon, it is a great way to gain additional
reviews and build relevancy so other customers can find you.

As you can see in the example below, Lightning Deals are run across many
different categories, including health and personal care, home and kitchen,
consumer electronics, fashion, grocery, and much more. Again, this is a
great way to not only sell units in the short term but also for trial and to win
new customers for future purchases.

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Chapter 6 Promotion Strategies on Amazon

Drive External Traffic

Many brands forget about this part, or reserve all external channels to point
to their online store. While there is obvious value in directing traffic to
your own site with ads, those same tactics will also work to promote your
Amazon listings.

Strategically decide which channels make sense to direct to Amazon. For

example, bloggers, vloggers, and other influencers often love directing
traffic to Amazon because they can collect an affiliate commission on
any customer’s’ purchases that come from their custom link. There are
two different programs to do this, Amazon Associates and the Amazon
Influencer program. You’ll find most bloggers will be familiar with Amazon
Associates as it’s designed for a vast array of businesses. Amazon’s new
Influencer Program however has been developed specifically for social
media influencers with large audiences. As a brand owner and Amazon
seller, both programs can be highly beneficial to the long-term health of your
business. Additionally, you can create discount codes to share externally
such as on your social media channels to encourage customers to buy on
Amazon, and hopefully leave reviews.

If you’re new to Shopify and Amazon, learn more about the integration
here. If you’re already selling with Shopify, add the Amazon sales
channel here.

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 7
Chapter 7 Selling on Amazon Tips: What Not to Do, Pitfalls, and Myths

Chapter 7

Selling on
Amazon Tips: What
Not to Do, Pitfalls,
and Myths
There is no shortage of so-called ‘Amazon experts’ out there, but
unfortunately much of the information I have seen published is either
incorrect, gives false hope, or approaches the topic in a roundabout way.
Here are some key points on what not to do:

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Chapter 7 Selling on Amazon Tips: What Not to Do, Pitfalls, and Myths

Product Misrepresentation
A study by Shotfarm found that 87% of consumers are unlikely to shop
with a brand again after purchasing an item misrepresented but its product
description, and 42% of US consumers have returned something due to
discrepancies in product descriptions.

Avoidable Out-of-Stocks
Unless there is a supply shortage on your end, going out of stock kills your
momentum, rankings, and sales potential. FBA short-term storage fees are
cheap, especially for small products, and in almost every case it is worth
having excess inventory available at Amazon Fulfillment centers to buffer
spikes in demand. There’s also the backup option of Fulfillment by Merchant.
Do what you can to avoid going out of stock.

Not Checking on Details and

Customer Feedback
Amazon is an extremely fast paced and active site, so in the few days that
you forgot to check your page you may have lost the buy box to another
seller, went out of stock, had a pricing error, or had your pictures updated to
something that you didn’t request.

Additionally, you may have missed out on the recent influx of negative
customer reviews that complain about a product issue that you weren’t aware
of due to a recent shipment of bad product sent to Amazon. Understanding
that as a seller or brand you may have hundreds or thousands of pages, it is
critical that you at least check your top selling pages frequently and invest in
technology that streamlines these tasks across your entire catalog.

Disregarding Amazon’s Terms of Service

Amazon is very protective of its customers and avoid having them feel
overly pressured or like they are receiving spam. They have strict guidelines
on what you are able to say on follow up emails (i.e. you’re not allowed to

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Chapter 7 Selling on Amazon Tips: What Not to Do, Pitfalls, and Myths

incentivize reviews), what inserts you are able to put in your packaging,
etc. If you’re always looking for a shortcut and to boost your rankings in
the short-term by engaging in something that is a violation of the Terms of
Service, you are jeopardizing your account and credibility on Amazon.

Not Responding to Customer Inquiries

You have 24 hours to respond to a customer, and there are automated tools
out there that can help you with at least providing an initial response. If
you do not respond in a timely manner to customer and Amazon inquiries,
you risk getting negative feedback as a seller and to your product. If you
are going out of town or unable to be responsive for a short period of time,
update your listings to vacation mode and have someone else jump in and
ensure that customer inquiries are being responded to.

Not Removing Incorrect Feedback

Amazon encourages you to work with a buyer who has left you negative
feedback to see if you can address their issue. You have the ability to, and
should, contact that buyer to resolve their issue and hopefully they will
remove the negative feedback. The same goes for incorrect feedback. While
you may not always be successful in getting these overturned, you will be
surprised at how many times simply asking in an appropriate and respectful
way will result in a buyer removing negative feedback.

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Chapter 8 Conclusion

8
Chapter 8

Conclusion
At first glance, Amazon can seem like a challenger to your business; a global
marketplace, a massive audience, a go-to destination for consumer search.
However, when approached properly, Amazon can actually help your
brand take-off. Listing optimization can help you get discovered by a global
audience and unlock new markets for you. In-Amazon promotions can
elevate your brand atop the competition giving you centerstage in front of a
highly qualified audience.

Your online store is your home base and Amazon is your opportunity to
reach massive new audiences. Strategic planning, experimentation and some
hustle will get you a long way to successfully selling on Amazon.

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Chapter 8 Conclusion

Use Shopify’s step-by-step guide to open up your new Amazon sales

channel and refer to this guide as you begin launching your products on
Amazon. As Shopify and Amazon work closer together on this integration,
they’ll be making more categories and functionality available for Shopify
users. Check back here and keep an eye on the Shopify blog for updates to
the Amazon channel.

If you’re ready to start selling on Amazon, install the sales channel now.

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About the Author

Fahim Naim
Fahim was previously a Category Manager at
Amazon where he owned and managed a multi-
hundred million dollar category and one of the
largest categories at Amazon. In under one year,
Fahim was able to grow his business by 50%+
despite a flat market. He founded eShopportunity
in 2014 to help brands better understand and
manage their online business. Fahim has been a
speaker at several leading e-commerce conferences,
webinars, and podcasts, including IRCE (2015 -
2017), keynote speaker at SLI Connect, has been
featured in a variety of publications, and much more.
eShopportunity’s current clients continue to benefit
from Fahim’s expertise and have achieved rapid
growth through execution of his recommendations.
Many clients have achieved massive growth as a
result of partnering of eShopportunity.

Disclaimer: Any of the logos, design rights, trade, service or collective marks that are
mentioned, used or cited in this book are the property of their respective owners.
Their use in this book does not imply that you may use them for any purpose other
than for a similar informational use.

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